With the headscarf secured tightly on my head, throttling my feminist ideals tentatively, I made my way out of the aircraft on landing at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International airport. I was a little anxious about galivanting alone in a country that had been put on the ‘axis of evil’ by the Western world, but its lure had been too strong to resist.
An Irani government official checked my passport and on realising that it was a foreign one, uttered a shy ‘welcome’. There! I had officially been welcomed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I spotted my guide waiting outside, a pleasant middle-aged woman wearing a green headscarf holding a placard with my name. Maryam extended her hand towards me and gave me a quick hug. “Welcome to Iran. I love Indians,” was the first thing that she said to me. “I love your strong work ethics and family values,” she continued as she helped load my bag in the white Chinese-made car which would take us around Iran.
Whatever few worries I may have had, evaporated in the warm Tehrani air. I sat back to enjoy the ride. Posters of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution, adorned the streets of Tehran. Layers of history were revealed to me as we made the journey. Tributes in the form of photos of young men who had been martyred in the long Iran-Iraq war lined the streets.
As we passed the famous Tajrish bazaar, we saw tiny shops full of myriad colours, cacophony and enticing aromas tantalisingly displaying their interesting wares. Colourful products were being sold on the roadside with the sellers calling out to potential customers encouraging them to buy. An old man walked past singing, I was told, a popular song while selling his wares.
There was a whiff of kebabs in the air. Throngs of people queued up patiently for take-aways outside food joints. It was noisy, crowded, a little intimidating and chaotic but I loved it all.
There were policemen within the throngs of people laughing and joking with them. Were these the dreaded basij? The basij or the moral police are subordinate to Iran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (whom Donald Trump has recently declared as a terrorist organisation).
“Are these the basij?” I asked Maryam, “I hear that they are much feared by everyone here.”
“Not at all,” said Maryam, “if we do not break the rules, what have we got to fear?”
The women I observed dressed stylishly, wore makeup, dined alone, worked alongside men and drove cars making it all look extremely normal. Yet, it is not easy to forget that numerous activists and feminists are fighting for their basic human rights in the country even now.
I travelled and marvelled all the way through Kashan, Yazd, Isfahan, Persepolis and Shiraz. Each site dazzled in its own way. But it was the people that impressed me at every turn. I could sense an eagerness in them to convey information about their country to me.
Inside a store In Yazd with a sign that warned visitors not to click pictures, the store owner disarmingly told me, “The sign does not apply to you. Please feel free to take pictures.” A restaurant owner In Kashan on realising that I was from India, told me that his friends said that he resembled ‘Raj Kapoor’.
When I went to buy some food in Isfahan and realised that I did not have enough Irani rials, the store owner gallantly let me have the food at a reduced price because I was a guest in his country.
When Maryam sensed that I was getting tired of eating meat every day, she invited me to her home in Shiraz, and cooked an Indian style vegetarian meal for me.
The palaces, mosques and bazaars are all mesmerising no doubt, but the real pull of Iran is her charming sense of hospitality and her utterly beguiling people.
